What was the reason for unloading the policy? You say that internet access wasn't working but were you still able to manage the gateway via SMS?
I would tend not to unload the firewall policy under normal circumstances, only in instances where management of the firewall is no longer possible via the network.
From the console of the gateway itself, is outbound connectivity possible? Are you able to ping your central SMS from the gateway?
You can confirm the current state of the policy be executing the below command from the console:
cpstat fw